Radio farmer's gift of the gab

The conversation can be very one-sided for a natural storyteller and chatterbox who spends much of the working week with a herd of dairy cows.

A cow lacks the wherewithal to appreciate issues associated with milk price volatility or cheap lamb imports but 15 years ago dairy farmer Will Prichard found a conduit for those discussions.

“I have never been one to shy away from the stage!’’ laughs Will, recalling the moment 15 years ago when he was offered the chance to become a presenter on Radio Pembrokeshire.

“The station had an hour to fill with local news stories from rural Pembrokeshire, specifically agriculture.’’

As an accomplished public speaker, he was a favourite for the presenting role, but the station wanted not one but two hosts.

Will has never met his sidekick, Sarah Miller, until the day he arrived at the studio to record the inaugural programme.

Sarah had studied agriculture at Harper Adams and worked as a supermarket buyer. In pursuit of the smallholder’s dream, she had then moved to rural Pembrokeshire with her young family.

Sarah and Will represented the dream team of the Pembrokeshire-born and bred commercial farmer and the good lifer.

Will inherited his gift as an orator from his grandfather, Arthur, who was an accomplished speaker and a key figure in the NFU.

That skill was honed at eisteddfodau and Will was encouraged to participate in the competition by his mother, Mary. In 1982 he triumphed in the under-nines recitation in a second language at the Urdd National Eisteddfod in Pwllhelli, sharing the stage with Aled Jones, at that time a little-known singer who went on to achieve fame with a cover version of ‘Walking in the Air’.

“Aled won the under-nines singing competition. You could say that our careers have run in parallel ever since because we are now both radio presenters, Aled on Radio 2 and me on Radio Pembrokeshire,’’ roars Will, having a good, hard belly laugh at the idea.

The content of Will and Sarah’s show is entirely decided by them and they admit to approaching it as farmers first and foremost.

When Will is not on the airwaves he runs a herd of 1,000 dairy cows and produces Wagyu beef, marketed under the Natural Wagyu brand, near Letterston.

Will’s wife, Alex, says their weekly discussion about his plans for the show always follow a similar format.

“If I ask him on a Monday what day he plans to go to the studio he will throw his hands in the air, as if the prospect of finding the time is insurmountable.

“But he always does because it means having a shower and putting on some tidy clothes and getting off the farm. But he will still be 20 minutes late.’’

Like the afternoon he was behind schedule on his way to the studio and was pulled over for speeding. “The police officer asked me where I was going in such a hurry and I told him I had to be at the studio in 15 minutes to record a radio show.

“He let me go, perhaps because he didn’t want to be responsible for the airwaves falling silent that afternoon. I didn’t let him know that the programme was recorded.’’

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